ClaverackLanding
, Gwen Gould, Director, at Helsinki Hudson
Joshua Rifkin,
piano
Rags, Tangos, Preludes, Fugues
Music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Scott Joplin, and Ernesto Nazareth
Bach: Prelude in C Major S.846/1; Joplin: "The Entertainer"; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in F Major S.856; Joplin, "Elite Syncopations"; Nazareth: "Vitorioso"; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in A♭ Major S.862; Nazareth: "Plangente"; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in C Minor S.847; Joplin: "Solace"; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in B♭ Minor S.866; Nazareth: "Fon-Fon!"; Joplin: "Magnetic Rag"; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in B♭ Minor S.867.
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- Joshua Rifkin (Photo: Michael Robert Williams)
When was it? 1972, 1973? Joshua Rifkin performed Scott Joplin at Alice Tully Hall. I had recently been bitten by the Joplin bug, largely owing to Mr. Rifkin's recordings, and remember hearing his lilting interpretations of the "Maple Leaf Rag," "Elite Syncopations," and "Magnetic Rag." His recordings on Nonesuch spurred a peculiarly "Rifkinesque" revival of ragtime. Recordings of rags, even of Joplin's, had been plentiful, but all done in a heavily nuanced "honky-tonk" technique with performers like Knocky Parker, Max Morath, or Dick Hyman; Joplin, an African-American genius who became a sensation with the "Maple Leaf Rag" of 1899, was poorly served when performed in the "finger-bustin'" style of Zez Confrey or Euday Bowman. Mr. Rifkin's revisionist approach to Joplin was to play these rags "as is," with little embellishment rubato
, or improvisation. Mr. Rifkin still adheres to a reserved
style that typifies his approach to all of his musical passions, including his pioneering approach to J. S. Bach. After Mr. Rifkin's recordings, Joplin was seen as a master of a genre that straddled both classical and popular idioms. In his poised interpretation, Mr. Rifkin clearly underscores Joplin's own view of himself as a composer expressing African-American idioms in a classical, Western formalism. While few interpreters following Mr. Rifkin's successful albums performed Joplin in this crystalline way, classically trained musicians throughout the seventies, influenced by his recordings, took a far more serious look at ragtime and at Joplin's music in particular. As a "cross-over" phenomenon, it was clear that Marvin Hamlisch's huge public success with Joplin's "The Entertainer" in the popular film
owed much to Mr. Rifkin's groundbreaking work.